The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.
Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place.
In practice, only some massacres matter, whether threatened or actual: namely, those that can be exploited by Western powers to further their own geostrategic interests (for example, see our media alerts here and here). The Nato-led attack on Libya in 2011 is a textbook example. Western politicians and their cheerleaders across the media ‘spectrum’ declared that the world had to act to prevent a ‘bloodbath’ in Benghazi when Gaddafi’s forces there were allegedly threatening to massacre civilians.
In fact, the public were subjected to a propaganda blitz to promote the Perpetual War that had already wreaked havoc in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of over one million people, the virtual destruction of the Iraqi state and the proliferation of Al-Qaeda and other militia groups.
In 2016, a report from the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee summarised the destructive consequences of Nato’s 2011 intervention in Libya:
‘The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL [Islamic State] in North Africa.’
As for the supposed threat of a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi, the alleged motivation for Nato’s ‘humanitarian intervention’, the report concluded that this ‘was not supported by the available evidence’. Likewise, claims that Gaddafi used African mercenaries and employed Viagra-fuelled mass rape as a weapon of war were invented.
Nato’s actual goals were regime change and Libya’s oil, long pursued by the UK. After years of the West cosying up to Gaddafi, including by Tony Blair, the Libyan leader had become a hindrance to Western interests.
As historian Mark Curtis observed:
‘three weeks after [then UK prime minister David] Cameron assured parliament in March 2011 that the object of the intervention was not regime change, he signed a joint letter with President Obama and French President Sarkozy committing to “a future without Gaddafi”.’
Curtis added:
‘That these policies were illegal is confirmed by Cameron himself. He told Parliament on 21 March 2011 that the UN resolution “explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means”.’
Like Blair, Cameron should have ended up in The Hague facing charges of war crimes.
‘Unapologetic Genocide’
If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children.
It took Amnesty International 14 months after the attacks of 7 October 2023 to publish a finding of genocide against Israel on 5 December 2024. A further four months have passed. In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire it never intended to keep, killing almost 1,600 Palestinians since then. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, around 51,000 people have been killed by Israel since October 2023. The actual death toll is likely much higher. Israel has also halted all supplies of food, fuel and humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware.
BBC News, no doubt aware of public scrutiny and perhaps also under internal pressure from some of their own journalists, set its ‘BBC Verify’ team to work. This followed the publication of harrowing video footage of Israel’s attack found on the mobile phone of Rifaat Radwan, one of the victims. Heartbreakingly, he could be heard saying moments before his killing:
‘Forgive me mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people. Accept my martyrdom, God, and forgive me.’
The 19-minute clip revealed that the vehicles in the convoy of the Palestinian Red Crescent had their headlights and emergency lights on, with high-vis jackets being worn, flatly contradicting Israel’s dishonest statements of the convoy behaving ‘suspiciously’ and constituting a ‘threat’.
Early BBC reports carried the headline: ‘Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza.’
This was the BBC once again bending over backwards to minimise Israel’s crimes.
The headline was later updated to a more accurate, but still soft-pedalling:
‘Israel changes account of Gaza medic killings after video showed deadly attack’
Notably, BBC News did not use the word ‘massacre’ in its reports, which it plainly was. Nor did they spell out that Israel’s spokespeople had been deceitful in their statements. In fact, Israel has a long history of spreading disinformation and even outright lies: a crucial fact that is routinely missing from ‘mainstream’ news reports.
Instead, the BBC said that Israel had merely ‘changed its account’ of what had happened. Likewise, the Guardian went with:
‘Israeli military changes account of Gaza paramedics’ killing after video of attack’
The 15 victims were but statistics, with little or no attempt to name or humanise them; no interviews with grieving relatives or account of their lives, their hopes, their ambitions.
Owen Jones put it well via X and, at greater length, in a video:
‘Imagine Russia executed 15 Red Cross medics and first responders, burying them in a mass grave.
‘Imagine it lied about this grave war crime. Imagine footage then proved this.
‘Would the BBC frame that as “Russia admits mistakes over medic killings in Ukraine”?
‘No it would not.’
On BBC News at Six on 7 April, international editor Jeremy Bowen concluded his account of Israel’s massacre of the 15 medics and emergency workers with a shameful piece of bothsidesism:
‘Israel now admits that its soldiers made mistakes when they attacked the convoy. It consistently denies it commits war crimes in Gaza. The evidence indicates that all the warring parties have done so.’ [Bowen’s own emphasis]
The egregious false balance, the failure to point out Israel’s long and disreputable record of lying, and the BBC’s refusal to use words such as ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’ are all glaringly obvious to the public.
Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’.
As mentioned, it is possible that both public and internal pressure on BBC News are occasionally having an impact on the broadcaster. As trade unionist Howard Beckett pointed out, the BBC initially reported the appalling Israeli attack on 13 April on the al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City, with the headline:
‘Gaza hospital hit by Israeli strike, Hamas-run healthy ministry says’
BBC News systematically includes the phrase ‘Hamas-run healthy ministry says’ in its headlines, implying that the source may not be trustworthy. The headline was later updated to:
‘Israeli air strike destroys part of last functioning hospital in Gaza City’
As ever with BBC News, Israel’s excuse for the attack appeared near the top of the article:
‘The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted the hospital because it contained a “command and control centre used by Hamas”.’
Richard Sanders, an experienced journalist and filmmaker, noted via X:
‘BBC again reports the Israeli claim the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital was a “command and control centre used by Hamas” without caveats – despite the fact such claims in the past have proved to be entirely untrue again and again. Bad, bad journalism.’
‘Bad, bad journalism’; namely, propaganda. But entirely standard for BBC News and much of what passes for ‘mainstream’ news.
Readers may recall that this is the same hospital where a devastating explosion occurred on 17 October 2023, killing 471 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel mounted a huge propaganda operation to try to convince the world that the cause was a ‘misfiring’ Palestinian rocket. However, detailed analysis by Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which investigates human rights violations, revealed that a more likely conclusion is that the cause was an exploding Israeli interceptor rocket.
In the hours after the explosion, doctors who treated the wounded held a news conference at nearby al-Shifa Hospital. There, the British-Palestinian surgeon Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, currently Rector of the University of Glasgow, said that: ‘This is a massacre’, predicting that ‘more hospitals will be targeted’.
Dr Abu-Sittah would later say that the blast at al Ahli hospital was the moment when it seemed clear to him that Israel’s military campaign ‘stopped being a war, and became a genocide’.
Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford pointed out that this was the fifth time the hospital had been bombed by Israeli military forces since October 2023.
As investigative journalist Dan Cohen noted of the latest attack:
‘This is the same hospital Israel bombed in October 2023 and waged a massive media disinformation campaign to blame a Palestinian rocket. Now they don’t even pretend. Unapologetic genocide.’
Does Italy Have A Right To Exist?
Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’
Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:
‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’
A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine? Instead of discussing how best to protect the Palestinian people and, more importantly, taking immediate decisive action to do so, the West continues to support the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel: arming it, providing diplomatic cover, colluding with the Israeli air forces with RAF spy flights over Gaza and war operations, including the secret supply of weapons to Israel, being conducted from the RAF base in Cyprus.
As is well known by now, the International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently deliberating over a case of genocide against Israel. Last year, the ICJ declared that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories – Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – is illegal. And the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. And yet, Netanyahu was recently welcomed with open arms in Washington, DC, having flown through airspace in France and other European countries which, under their ICC obligations, should have denied him that privilege.
Palestinian journalist Lubna Masarwa, Middle East Eye’s Palestine and Israel bureau chief, observed that:
‘To western leaders, there are no red lines for Israel’s slaughter. Emboldened by the US and other western powers, Israel feels it can get away with unleashing hell on all Palestinians.’
She added: ‘The inhumanity of these times scares me, as a journalist and as a person.’
Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.
As Andrew Feinstein, the author, activist and former South African MP, stated in a recent powerful video for Double Down News:
‘The West has a choice: stop supporting genocide or mutate their own democracies and destroy international law forever. The West has chosen the latter.’